Antonia's Choice

by Nancy Rue

  Hale pulled his square hand across his mouth, and his eyes looked uneasy. The degree wasn’t kicking in.

  “I was thinking of some kind of intervention,” I said. “Ben isn’t going to listen to me. I tried that this morning. I’m the one who left him there—at my sister’s house. For all he knows, I’m in cahoots with her.”

  “You’re probably right there,” Hale said. “But Miz Wells, I don’t think an explanation from me is going to solve this.”

  “Ben’s a smart kid. I think coming from the right source—”

  “It isn’t Ben I’m thinking about—I mean, not directly. Was he behaving this way before Wyndham came to stay with you?”

  “To a degree. She’s definitely exacerbated the situation, though.”

  “So it probably isn’t going to get any better as long as she’s there—and neither is she.”

  “I plan to get her into therapy.” Plan was perhaps too strong a word. I could say it was definitely one of the hundreds of things that had whipped through my head in the last twelve hours.

  “Can I just tell you what I think from what I’ve seen in Wyndham already?” Hale said. “Then maybe we can make more headway here.”

  “Sure,” I said, though I could feel my back stiffening.

  “Wyndham made a big step over the weekend,” he said. “Huge. She now knows she has your support, and that’ll go a long way in her healing process. But she has even bigger issues, issues neither you nor I am equipped to deal with, I’m sure. There’s the shame—you saw her last night—and it doesn’t matter that she didn’t go out on her own and sell herself on the street, she still thinks it’s her fault. The world revolves around kids that age. They think everything is about them.”

  He looked at me, eyebrows raised as if waiting for a signal that I could handle more.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “And then there’s the guilt. She didn’t fight her father or turn her mother in sooner or run out of the house with little Ben in her arms and go straight to the police. Threats or no threats, we all think we should be heroes and we can’t stand ourselves when we’re not.”

  “I hear that.”

  “Plus she’s angry.”

  I shifted in the chair. “I don’t see evidence of that. Ben has a nonexistent fuse, but she—”

  Hale was patting his chest. “She keeps it all in here, and I think it’s raging. Between that and the self-loathing, she’s just a time-bomb tickin’ away.”

  “Where do you see that?” I said.

  “She’s not taking care of herself, for one thing. Does she eat? Sleep?”

  “Not much. But she paints her fingernails and wants me to send out her blouses to be starched.”

  I caught myself looking at my own nails, at the ends of my professionally laundered sleeves.

  “My guess is that she hates herself so much, she’s trying to be somebody else,” Hale said.

  “But don’t you just do that kind of thing when you’re fifteen? I tried to be Dorothy Hamill.”

  “That by itself wouldn’t be a danger sign, if it weren’t combined with other things. Have you noticed the cuts on her legs?”

  “What cuts on her legs?” I grimaced. “I obviously haven’t.”

  “The kids were all dangling their legs in the pool at Lindsay’s the other night, so she had her jeans rolled up. One of the girls asked her if she’d cut herself shaving, and she said she did.” Hale’s eyebrows went up again. “If she did, she was shaving with a buzz saw.”

  “Where are you going with this?”

  “Self-mutilation.” He said it gently, as if the words themselves might cut me. “Kids will do that when they’re so depressed they want to see if they can feel anything. Or it’s one of the things they’ll do when they hate themselves. It could be both with Wyndham.”

  “If that’s what she’s doing.”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t think you can address that with her? She obviously has a lot of respect for you already, and the church approach seems to work for her. She asked me if she could go to church here.” I tried a smile. “Seems like the perfect combination to me, if you’re willing.”

  “I’m not willing to get into something I can’t handle.”

  The weight of his voice surprised me. It was as somber as the air that seemed to sink down on us as he leaned toward me, his forearms on his knees, his square hands marking his words.

  “I think she’s severely depressed,” Hale said, “and I think she could become suicidal. I’m sure we don’t know the half of what’s happened to that girl, and when she finds out she has to face it all, she’s going to want to run the other way.”

  “You think she’ll try to kill herself? Even knowing she has my support now?”

  Hale’s eyes locked onto mine. “Can you give her support any time of the day or night for the next year at the least—and take care of what your own child has to face? Is there that much of you to go around?”

  The programmed response was, of course, Yes! I can do that—and become president of Faustman Financial and rescue every retiree taken to the cleaners by the bull market with one arm in a sling.

  But it hit me again that all previous bets were off. None of them had involved the kind of senseless, twisted issues that lay before me now.

  “I don’t know,” I said finally. “Because I don’t know what’s going to be involved. But my guess is no.”

  The air grew more oppressive. I wanted to get out of there, and I even reached for my purse, which I had managed to kick all the way into the corner under the chair. I turned upside down to retrieve it, and when I came up, face throbbing, Hale was already halfway up.

  “Why don’t you sit down for just another minute?” he said.

  I barely perched on the edge of the seat, and then only to make sure half my belongings hadn’t rolled out onto the Berber. I was feeling less put-together by the second.

  “Look, I don’t want to waste your time,” I said. “You’ve put things in perspective for me and I appreciate that, but since you can’t really help me further—”

  “I didn’t say that,” Hale said. “I just said I couldn’t be her therapist. But I know some people who probably can.”

  I pulled my head up from my gaping purse. “Are you talking about a support group—something like that?”

  “No. I’m talking about a residential facility where Wyndham will get twenty-four-hour care and intensive therapy and continuous spiritual direction.”

  He thrust them upon his fingers—each one a requirement I couldn’t blink at. I sat staring at his hand, all denial seeping away.

  “You think she needs a psychiatric hospital,” I said.

  “This is a treatment facility serving only adolescent girls. They specialize in treating victims of abuse. It’s not drug rehab or a correctional unit. It’s a healing place.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Ridgetop—about twenty miles north of here. It’s faith-based—all competent, certified doctors and psychologists.” Hale hesitated. “Now, it’s pricey, but some insurance companies do cover limited stays. Never long enough, but—”

  “Don’t worry about the money,” I said. “That can be taken care of.” I grunted to myself. We’d finally entered an area where I felt competent, and I was brushing it off. “You think they can help Wyndham?”

  “I think it’s worth looking into. I can call and see if they have space, then we can take it from there.” He paused. “That is, if you want my help. I’m not trying to push myself in here.”

  “You’re not pushing. I appreciate it—at least until I get my bearings. This is a little out of my comfort zone.”

  Hale shook his head. “This is out of everybody’s comfort zone, Miz Wells.”

  “Call me Toni,” I said.

  Though at the moment, I wasn’t sure that was who I was at all.

  Seven

  HALE CALLED TRINITY HOUSE while I was still sitting in his office trying to make some kin
d of sense out of the images of my niece carving her initials into her legs and my son screaming in her arms as he was hauled away from my leering brother-in-law and my sister smiling above it all while she blithely pasted birthday party photos into a scrapbook. I had to press both hands against my jaw to get it unclenched. If I’d thought it through any further, my teeth would have ground to powder. As it was, the muscles in my face were throbbing.

  “You okay?”

  I looked up to see Hale watching me, one palm pressed over the phone receiver.

  “What did you find out?” I said.

  “They have a bed available. If she’s approved, they can admit her a week from today.”

  MTV-like visions of juggling Wyndham’s and Ben’s comings and goings for seven more days flashed through my already-crowded brain, but I nodded. I didn’t have a whole lot of choices.

  While Hale scribbled things on a notepad and murmured uhhuhs into the phone, I tried to manufacture some.

  I could send Wyndham back to Richmond, where my mother would promptly pack her off to foster care unless I could convince her that Wyndham’s condition more than proved that she was telling the truth. Mama was Wyndham’s grandmother—that had to count for something, no matter how obsessed she was with her precious Bobbi.

  But then what? Mama was no better equipped to handle Wyndham at home than I was. She already had Techla and Emil, who, it suddenly occurred to me, were probably in dire need of some professional care themselves.

  There was no way around it. We either had to put Wyndham in a residential facility here or in Richmond. Or some kind of state-operated—

  I nixed that before it even had a chance to take shape in my thoughts. I’d once had a client whose brother was in the state psychiatric hospital in Virginia. The stories he told me had made a slow death by strangulation sound preferable.

  Hale hung up the phone and came out from behind the desk to join me in the catty-cornered chairs. I’d gone down so many mental bunny trails by then, I felt as if he’d been absent for hours.

  “So far so good,” he said. “The woman I talked to—” he consulted the pad—“Betty Stires—says that just from what I’ve told her, Wyndham will probably be a good fit. She’s having a packet delivered here which I can get to you tonight so you can start the paperwork.”

  “What kind of paperwork are we talking about?” I felt myself let go a little. Paperwork was something I knew how to do.

  “They’ll need Wyndham’s medical records, plus whatever information the police in Richmond will give us, and your proof of guardianship—”

  “I don’t have guardianship. I don’t know who does at this point. Wyndham was just here for a visit.” I shook my head, bangs flopping down onto my eyebrows. “Never mind. I’ll get all of that taken care of. What else?”

  “We’ll know more when we get the packet,” Hale said. “Why don’t you see what you can do with that much, and then if you want we’ll get together tonight and take it from there. I can also help you break all of this to Wyndham, if—”

  He paused, ponytail swinging slightly to the side as he tilted his head.

  “Yes, I still want your help,” I said. “I’m clueless about this kind of thing.”

  “Who isn’t? None of us thinks somebody we love is going to be abused. Why would you prepare yourself for something you never think is going to happen?”

  “She hasn’t exactly been abused.”

  Hale’s eyes went still behind the square-rimmed glasses. “I don’t know what else I would call it.”

  “I think of abuse as hitting.”

  “It’s using any kind of power to make someone do something they don’t want to do and shouldn’t have to do. The results are the same whether you belt somebody across the mouth or scream into their face—or take their picture naked. It all ends up in shame.”

  I felt as if I had just been belted in the mouth. Hale’s eyes softened.

  “I’m sorry—I get a little hot about this.”

  “So pornography is considered abuse,” I said.

  “It’s considered sexual abuse.” Hale looked down at his square hands, as if to give me the privacy to react. “By taking pictures of them, this man molested every child he photographed.”

  He didn’t add the rest. He didn’t have to. It was there in the silence: Including your child, Toni. Even yours.

  I spent much of the afternoon trying to get the ball rolling on guardianship. I was glad to have that to do to keep my mind from returning to what Hale hadn’t said. When my thoughts did sneak back to it, I just kept reassuring myself: Once I get Wyndham settled at Trinity House, I can focus on Ben. Now that I know what’s wrong, I can work this out. One thing at a time.

  Logic and organization—I only had those few tools in my bag. Maybe, I thought, I ought to try to emulate Hale somehow, too. I’d known the man less than twenty-four hours and I already wanted to be like him when I grew up. He was, so far, the sanest person on this whole scene.

  Determining Wyndham’s current guardianship meant a phone call to my mother, and I went at it with less of a sense that I was going into battle than I’d felt lately when dialing her number. Firm but gentle, soothing, that was the Hale-way. Coax a change of heart out of Mama so she would ease up on Wyndham—and on me. If she wanted this to be a matter for the whole family, then that was exactly what I was making it.

  Mama answered the phone halfway through the first ring, voice raspy. She sounded as if she’d just polished off half a carton of Camels.

  “Mama?” I said.

  “Toni.”

  “You sound terrible. What’s wrong?”

  “What isn’t wrong?”

  “Still no word on bail?”

  “No word on anything. Unless you’re calling to give me some good news.”

  “I have news,” I said slowly. “I don’t know how good it is, but it definitely sheds some light on things.”

  “What kind of light? Are you talking about Wyndham?”

  “I am. Just hear me out, now.” I tried to make my voice softer. “She told me last night that she was photographed by Sid, too, Mama, just like Techla. I know they haven’t found any pictures of her, but—”

  “Yes, they have. Last night.”

  By now I would have thought I’d be getting used to the sensation of being slammed in the chest with a heavy object, but each time it was more painful than the previous slam—as if it were hitting the same sore spot that hadn’t had a chance to toughen up.

  “They found photos of all three children on the Internet,” Mama said. “They brought them over here for me to identify them. I had to look at my own grandchildren—”

  Mama’s voice teetered out of control, careening into the walls of her living room and taking her sanity out of my reach.

  “Mama!” I said over her. “Try to get a grip. You can’t lose it now!” So much for sounding like Hale. “You have to tell me something—listen to me!”

  “What—what more can I tell you, Toni? The world has already fallen about as hard as it’s going to fall.”

  “Did they find any pictures of Ben?”

  “Ben? Your Ben?”

  “Wyndham told me that Sid took pictures of him, too. She said that he always gave Ben to her to take to Bobbi when he was done. Bobbi knew about it, Mama, and that is part of what’s driving Wyndham out of her mind. Now, I need your help. I have to get Wyndham into a residential facility and to do that I need to establish guardianship.”

  “I’ll tell you who has guardianship of that girl.” The voice that scraped my eardrums was not my mother’s. “The devil owns her now. That’s the only way she would turn on her own mother like this.”

  “Mama, come on! Since when did you start believing in the devil?” I shook my head, hand pressed to my left temple. “Okay—look—forget that. Let’s just get down to cases here. I’m trying to get some help for Wyndham so I can—”

  “You take that girl’s side and you are as good as dead to me, Antonia.
Those fundamentalists can have the both of you.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m trying to get some help for your grand—”

  She heard none of it. I was talking to a dial tone.

  Head reeling, I punched out Reggie’s number.

  “Good morning, Faustman Financial. This is Regina. How may I help you?”

  “You can tell me whether you believe in the devil,” I said.

  “Toni, honey?”

  “Are you a fundamentalist, Reggie?”

  “What on earth?”

  “Never mind. Reg, I need the name of a good lawyer.”

  “You need somebody to help you get yourself committed, sugar?”

  I took a breath, quite possibly the first real one I’d drawn all day.

  “No. You are not going to believe what’s happening.”

  “Try me.”

  “You sitting down?”

  She was by the time I finished telling her everything that had gone down since Wyndham’s return from her weekend with Hale et al. I could picture her sunken back into the leather chair, nails gripping the arms, face wreathed with concern. I could hear it in the exclamations she was punching out, and it was moving me toward tears. I choked them down into my chest with everything else I was packing in there, waiting to be slammed yet again.

  “I’ll get on my little church hot line and see if I can find you a lawyer,” Reggie said. “Don’t move. I’ll call you right back.”

  But I had to move. I couldn’t sit there and let the thoughts take over. Who knew how long it was going to take for Reggie to work her magic? I could be nuts by the time she called back.

  The only other thing I could do—the thing I had to do—was call Chris. He had a right to know what had happened to his son. I gripped the receiver. I just had to phrase it right or the whole conversation was going to turn into another ploy to bring me back to Richmond.

  So why not go back? I thought. Wouldn’t this whole thing be a lot easier with a lawyer husband—okay, estranged husband—on hand to work out all these kinks? Wouldn’t he be sure Sid—and Bobbi—got what was coming to them?